Well, I thought it might just be that, but I got it in IE6 on my laptop (usually I do things from my desktop) when I was trying stuff earlier, but I didn't have time to pursue it then (had to get to work), and it's not happening now. The laptop has no security software on it at all, and default settings for IE6, with no plugins installed at all in IE, and no FF. It's just used for testing things on the network/internet. So at least I know it is not just a FF thing, nor is it something in security settings to block scripts/etc.
When it happened both in this thread yesterday and in the one earlier today, I could see that there was a new post by someone else between the time I hit quote to bring up the reply page, and the time I actually submitted the reply and got the error.
I can't remember if there was a new post in the other thread I was trying to help in before.
The only other thing common to all was that when it *started*, I was trying to quote someone, although that was not part of the problem when I tried to do post new things or replies afterward, once it "broke completely" (until changing to Standard editor).
The intermittent nature of the problem means that there must be some specific conditions to trigger the bug, so most people probably do not see it, but it is still a bug in the software if it is not accepting the text submitted in the form, regardless of the conditions that trigger it.
As has been noted elsewhere in the many threads about this issue on various forums, no specific browser or OS is required to cause the problem, so there must be specific conditions in the Vbulletin software that create the issue, though I still do not know what the root cause itself actually is, or the exact conditions that cause it.
Once the problem is triggered, it appears to persist for some, but not for others. Some people can get around it by creating a whole new username for a board that won't accept posts from their original username, implying that something is created locally on their system to persist data for that board/username, which is not kept in cookies or cache (because clearing those does not fix it for everyone (did not for me).
When the problem occurs in FF, the .mozilla file (which I need to research the contents of) can be deleted to fix the problem for some people (did not for me, though I simply moved the file to a USB thumbdrive and unplugged it, rather than deleting it, then moved it back when it did not change anything).
For some people, setting the editor to Standard from WSIWYG (the default on most Vbulletin forums) fixes the problem, but for others it must first be set to Basic and *then* Standard. That probably depends on which version of Vbulletin is running, I suspect. But in either case, changing back to WSIWYG still doesn't let me post--I have to leave it in Standard.
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VAPORIZER VULCANO